Former Skype CEO leads $2M investment in online games offer firm SupersonicAds

Former Skype chief executive Michael van Swaaij has led a $2 million round of funding for SupersonicAds, the newest kid on the block in the online game offer business.

London-based SupersonicAds has created a virtual goods platform that allows online game publishers to make money from virtual goods sales. It presents users with special ads known as offers, which allow the user to sign up for a Netflix subscription, for example, in exchange for virtual currency. That virtual currency can be used to buy goods in a game. Those offers are currently used in more than 150 social apps across Facebook, Myspace, Orkut and other social networks. The company has more than 450 advertisers.

SupersonicAds has started in the European market and is now expanding around the world. It is now available in 20 languages.

Van Swaaij was interim chief executive at Skype. He became its chairman just before eBay sold off the internet voice business in December, 2009. He served as chief strategy officer at eBay and managed eBay Europe.

“I have seen the exponential growth in monetization of virtual goods over the past several years,” says van Swaaij. “There are now a handful of monetization platform solutions for the industry. However, SupersonicAds has created a customized technology and proven itself as the leader in Europe for virtual goods monetization and is steadily gaining strength as a leader on a more global scale.”

Gil Shoham is chief executive of SupersonicAds. Customers include IMVU, King.com, Playdom, Bigpoint, Live Gamer, NHN USA, Watercooler, PlaySpan and Small Worlds. SupersonicAds was founded in 2008 by Shoham and Arik Czerniak, co-founder of Metacafe. It has 32 employees. Rivals include TrailPay, Super Rewards (part of Adknowledge) and Offerpal Media. It’s not clear to me if this is just another me-too business in the crowded offer space.